couples. The quality of cloud in one locale

or another, solace of the contrail

noon—who cares? Why even

look up, when all we’ll see is people

looking down? Their grapefruit juice

on the balcony. Their news. Their delight

at the sight of us. We entertain them.

We kiss and spit and strike. We’re always

changing. They like it when

we fight: I’LL KNOCK THE LIVING—

Say It to My Face

Say It to My Face

In this age of nostalgia, all I really have

is how, speeding by the salt-bitten building

where I used to live, I don’t point it out.

What a lowly source of pride—the refusal

to inflict on one’s carpool companions

a past address. LOOK AT ME, NOT MAKING

IT ABOUT ME. But what would anyone

have to say, except OH? They never

were there. They don’t know the insolent

kitchen. They can’t still smell the skewers

in the foil tin, or the stink of shots

at a late hour, when guests had mostly gone.

That must have been J’s fortieth.

Or maybe the vigil for T? This is why

we shouldn’t have occasions. Same crowd,

same food, same room—it runs together.

A scene in my mind seems buoyant, and then

I realize. But even worse is the other

way around. Why is it that any time I halfascend

this heap of pain, I get cut down?

Good Share

Good Share

An airport—like a hog farm,

like a landfill, like a graveyard—

has to go somewhere. An airport

has to go somewhere, so

why not here? I nominate you

and you and me to roil

in our respective beds while planes

fly so low overhead we can tell

what makes they are. The yowl

of the Airbus, the Boeing’s

Gregorian roar. At least they drown

out the rest of this inexcusably human

night: longneck bottle greeting

the side of a passing car,

strange chanting, fistfight too close

to the tracks, the neighbors

with their nonstop innovation

in the arena of sex-offender-registry

drinking games. View the mug shot,

guess the offense, drink a shot if

you’re wrong. Eleven men in ten

locations: guess which two guys

split a duplex. Drink a shot

if you’re wrong. Plug in the ocean

in order to find out if anyone’s

currently in the ocean and if

we, consequently, should avoid it.

Do you think we should avoid it?

Drink a shot if you’re

wrong. Drink while you can,

because I heard from a dead guy

there’s no alcohol in Heaven.

I also heard no alcohol

on Earth. If you’re drinking right

now, buddy, you’re in Hell.

It Used to Be We Had to Go to War

It Used to Be We Had to Go to War

just to make enough dead men

to give up to God. Then God stopped

caring for sacrifice, but you know